


Just Like Heaven

by eirabach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Movie AU, Rewrite, and ghostly romance, and true love, angst and heavy drinking, the usual, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:54:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 20,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23987701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eirabach/pseuds/eirabach
Summary: Emma Swan always gets her man, she isn't going to let a little thing like death get in the way.[A rewrite of 'Glow', my Just Like Heaven movie AU that wasn't.]
Relationships: Captain Hook | Killian Jones/Emma Swan
Comments: 93
Kudos: 108
Collections: Captain Swan Movie Marathon, Captain Swan Supernatural Summer 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> With love to the Captain Swan Rewriteathon team, and apologies for not managing to get this done in time.

She dreams of the ocean.

The skies are bright blue, and cartoon-fluffy clouds scud overhead as the ship skips over the waves with her at the bow. The wind catches at her hair and she laughs - a wild, bell-like sound she barely recognises - and spreads her arms wide.

Somewhere behind her, someone is calling her name.

_Emma!_

_Emma?_

“Emma? Emma!”

She sits bolt upright, the cheap plastic chair creaking alarmingly beneath her weight as she sways backwards. Her half eaten breakfast doughnut rolls sadly across the table and drops to the floor, and she scrubs at the smear of cinnamon frosting it’s left on her cheek.

“Sorry, what,” she mumbles, blinking grit from her eyes. “I was just - ”

“Snoring,” says her boss, lips twitching into a sneer. “So glad you could rejoin us.”

“Sorry,” Emma mutters again, “it won’t - it won’t happen again.”

Zelena lifts one perfectly manicured eyebrow over the file she’s holding out, Emma cringing inwardly as she realises that every person around the rickety old boardroom table is watching her with expressions that range from amused, to pitying, to - in Jefferson’s case - alarmingly hungry.

“Rough night?” he asks, with a lecherous sort of grin. “We could make it… rougher, if you like?”

Emma squeezes her hands into fists and forces her expression into a tight smile.

“Not in any way you’d enjoy, Jefferson. I might, though.”

Ruby scoffs into her hand, covering it up with a cough, and the two of them exchange a swift look. Ruby’s still in last night’s make-up too, but hers is still practically pristine, her lips still devil red as she quirks them briefly at Emma.

Emma’s carefully applied mascara, on the other hand, is smeared under her eyes and down her cheeks from hours spent waiting in the rain, her lipstick long since bled away.

It really had been a rough night.

Her mark had been a particularly nasty piece of work, skipping bail and leaving not only one well-meaning and heavily pregnant girlfriend to foot the bill, but two, and Emma had been warned in advance that he had form for getting nasty when things weren’t going his way.

He also, it seemed, had form for standing up dates. In the rain.

And possibly Varsity Level Track and Field skills.

She could imagine better starts to the day than dealing with Zelena and Jefferson after six hours of extensive wet-weather cross-country running and twenty minutes sleep. She squirms in her seat, her shoulder aching still from where he’d attempted to wrench it from its socket before she’d finally managed to get the drop on him, and meets Zelena’s gaze with a glare of her own.

“I got the mark,didn’t I?” she says. “I just didn’t get much sleep.”

“I hope you enjoyed your little cat nap, then,” says Zelena, sliding the file over to Emma. “Because here’s the next one.”

Emma’s brow furrows as she looks at the golden embossed motif on the front of the file, the heavy cardstock, the six figure reward for bringing this guy in.

Somebody must have been a really, really naughty boy.

“The cops increased their budget lately?”

“Not for the police,” Zelena says smugly, leaning back in her chair and folding her arms. “This is on behalf of a private client.”

“Hey.” Emma drops the file on the table and shakes her head sharply. “We do bailsbonds, not PI work.”

Zelena hums, her eyes going wide. “Is that what it says on my door? Well I never.”

“You don’t have a door,” Emma mutters, but Zelena is leaning over the table now, her eyes sharp, and Emma is forcibly reminded that although she’s good at her job - great, even - Zelena is still very much the boss.

“And you don’t have a choice,” she hisses. “Unless you think I should give the mark to someone else?” 

Out of the corner of her eye she sees both Ruby and Jefferson sit up a little straighter, and her eyes drift back down to the file.

She doesn’t know who Mr Gold is, and she has no idea what he wants with the dark-haired man in the grainy CCTV photo - this Killian Jones - but she knows how much money is left for the month. She knows Henry went to school this morning in jeans a half inch too short.

And it’s six figures. Six.

“No,” she says, closing the file and resting her hands on top of it. “I’ve got this.”

\--

The office - such as it is - isn’t the sort of place Emma likes to spend much of her time, even at the best of times which, frankly, this sort of isn’t. Ruby’s nice, outgoing enough to spring the honey traps Emma wouldn’t dare and a personable sort of person to have around if you didn’t mind the constant sound of gum smacking, but even she isn’t a generous enough soul to congratulate Emma on being handed a case that might make her rich. And Jefferson had looked ready to murder her before she’d slipped past the splintered remains of what had once been Zelena’s door and settled herself into the only comfy chair in the place - an elderly padded desk chair reserved for clients that always smells faintly of despair.

Zelena could afford to replace it, of course. Emma thinks she just rather likes the scent.

“All right,” she says, crossing her legs and trying not to wince as her knees protest. “Spill.”

Zelena taps her nails on her desk and tosses her hair over her shoulder.

“Afraid I don’t know what you mean,” she says with suspiciously wide eyes. “Is there a problem?”

“You tell me,” Emma snaps back, the file toht between her fingers. “Since when do we take on private clients - since when do private clients want to hire us?” She gestures to the door, it’s smashed glass panel and missing edges a testament to the sort of review Oz Bail Bonds has received in the past. “Something’s up.”

For a moment Zelena’s sneer drops, her fingers still, the confidence she wears like her knock-off suit flickering briefly out of existence.

“That’s none of your business,” she says, eyes narrowing. “Just do your job, Swan.”

“I will,” Emma snaps, “but not if - I have Henry to worry about you know.”

Zelena rolls her eyes in the particularly dismissive manner she reserves for those rare occasions her staff dare to remind her that they have lives outside of the office walls.

“Best make sure you don’t fail, then.” She gestures to the door, her contribution clearly finished. “Although,” she says, “since you’re here…” She reaches into her desk drawer and removes one of the thin, buff coloured files preferred by Portland PD. Clipped to the front is a picture of a red-faced, piggy-eyed man, with slicked back black hair and a smile even a mother would cringe at. “Jefferson didn’t quite bring home the bacon on this one, so to speak. Would you mind?”

Zelena smiles her reptilian smile and Emma thinks of her bed, the three day old take out festering in the fridge. She thinks of Henry’s face as he waits for her to collect him from school only to see Mary Margaret turn up again.

“Would it matter if I did?”

Zelena’s smile almost reaches her eyes.

“Not in the least.”

—

If you were to ask Killian Jones where he’d gone wrong in his life he’d struggle to put his finger on any one event. Too many coincidences. Too little respect for authority. Too much death. Too little faith. Not enough rum.

Well, maybe not that last one, though it is what brings him out tonight.

He stumbles through the night, his collar drawn up against the cold and his hat pulled low against prying eyes. The streets are unfamiliar still, the accents around him notably unlike his own, and it’s a stupid idea, this. Foolish. Idiotic. Risky. Irresponsible. All the things that he’d been, before. All the things that he’d sworn to leave behind, after.

(It seems he’s yet to make a vow he can’t break.)

He’s too sober to be this maudlin. Too sober by far.

Luckily, that’s one of the few things he can do anything about. 

His legal team know nothing of the little dockside hole in the wall joint he’s taken to frequenting when they clock off for the night. He’s spent weeks under their watchful gaze, sitting sweet between the four magnolia walls of the safehouse, and maybe they’re as bored as he is or maybe they secretly agree that he deserves what’s coming to him, but gradually they’ve given him a few tiny tastes of freedom. The disposition is pending, after all. His evidence presented in black and white. So perhaps it doesn’t matter that they’ve left a newspaper here. An open bathroom window there.

And he might be nothing else, but he’s resourceful.

He’s resourceful, and soon, he plans to be drunk.

Liam hated him being drunk.

He hated the dive bars he’d frequent, the women he’d bring home, the friends he’d spend his nights with. 

Sometimes - most of the time - he wonders if Liam had just hated him. 

He’d have been well within his rights. 

He’d been left with a feckless little sod of a younger brother to care for when his career was barely beginning, all those early paychecks dropped on a boy who barely understood the sacrifice and wouldn’t have appreciated it if he had. God only knows, even now, how he’d managed to convince his superiors to allow his delinquent younger brother access to the shipyards. 

It’s why he sticks to the docks. The scent of brine and engine oil takes him back to those hazy distant days when Liam had tried to save him from himself, and the ships that almost had.

But then, Liam was gone. And along with him any hope for Killian Jones in the world at large.

The Underworld had taken him, and he’d let it.

The black market, after all, did have better rum. 

Better than this place certainly, but he drinks the proffered dross anyway. Needs must. And besides, it stops burning after the fourth shot.

Perhaps if he’d stopped there he’d have stood a chance of noticing the man in the corner of the bar. Most unfortunates who patronise a place like this tend to keep their heads down and their drinks coming, but this one - this one has his eye on Killian. 

And he’s been cradling the same pint for an hour. 

Killian doesn’t notice him, or the anxious way he shifts his weight. He doesn’t notice the glint of silver in his pocket, nor the sweat that blooms across his brow. He would have, once. Would have cared, once. But now all he cares about are the dribbles of rum that slip down shaking fingers and the goddamn waste of it all.

So he doesn’t notice. Doesn’t care. Not until he’s eight shots deep and the world is spinning, stinking of garbage and vomit, footsteps behind him and it’s too damn late to run. 

Too damn late by far. 

\---

It hadn’t always been like this of course. 

It’s sort of surreal this half-life of hers, lived in the shadows of other people’s mistakes. She works mainly when the streets are dark and empty, sleeping the daylight away as best she can in an old recliner swiped from a skip, her son’s third-hand xbox blaring brightly away just beyond the edge of her consciousness. She’s tired, always, and never quite as well off as she ought to be for the hours she puts in - the stain of Zelena’s fingerprints over every pay cheque - but on balance, it’s alright. 

It used to be far, far worse.

At least she was sleeping in her car voluntarily nowadays. Not like those early days before, cold and desperate, she’d thrown herself on the mercy of the only friend she could remember having, her worst best mistake wailing in her arms and her prison issue clothes hanging off too thin shoulders.

And Mary Margaret had let her in.

And let her in. And let her in.

Until their brief High School friendship had developed into something almost like family, almost just right.

She’s getting morbid, it’s getting late. The two things might be connected.

It’s been a depressingly long time since she’d backed the bug into the alleyway outside of the mark’s preferred drinking den, and she’d done nothing ever since but squint into the dark - nothing except fire off a quick text to Mary Margaret begging off school pick up and hoping she’d take mercy.

Again.

It’s a theme, of sorts.

(And if she hadn’t answered Mary Margaret’s follow up call, well. She can’t afford to get distracted on a job.

She can’t afford for Mary Margaret to finally say no.)

From somewhere under the pile of cheeseburger wrappers in her passenger footwell she hears the buzz of her phone and winces.

She sort of should have, maybe, called Mary Margaret back.

No time for that now though. At the end of the alleyway she sees the shadow of a man leaving the bar, the tell-tale lurching gait of the heavy drinker giving her time to slip out of the bug, gun in hand, before he’s able to disappear into the shadows.

This is always the riskiest part - the choice. Does she shout, ensuring the guy currently emptying his guts against a dumpster is the one she’s after but possibly setting herself up for another late night cross country session? Or does she lurk in the dark like some sort of comic book vigilante, creeping along with her back to the damp alleyway walls and hope that she’s able to get the drop on him?

(Her knees hurt. Decision made.)

She inches towards the dark figure, wrinkling her nose up as he retches into the gutter, the street lights casting a yellow halo around his unruly hair. He’s mumbling to himself as he wipes his mouth on his sleeve, some sort of half conversation with the demons in his own head, and Emma slides her gun back into her belt. She’s not going to need it.

Somehow, she gets the impression that if she breathes too hard at this one he’ll drop like a leaf.

“Hey,” she says softly, stepping into the glow of the light, her hands open at her sides. “I think you ought to come with me”

He pauses his mumbling, his shoulders heaving slightly from the effort of being sick, and she sees the way his right hand tightens on the edge of the dumpster.

There’s a crack - thunder that isn’t - a sharp, wet, blooming pain in her stomach. Screeching rubber and her own pulse harsh in her ears as she stumbles forward, grabbing for the edge of the drunk’s jacket as she falls.

She gasps. Henry’s name garbled in blood. Her phone’s in her car. She needs to tell this guy… he needs to tell Henry… she needs…

_Help._

He turns, a flash of blue against white, and everything goes dark.


	2. Chapter 2

“I don’t know what you expected,” Regina mutters, arms folded across her chest. “Anything other than twenty five to life and I’d have thought you’d jump at it.”

Killian peers past her with narrowed eyes, his nose wrinkling slightly as the smell of the drains drifts on the wind from the battered building before them. Somewhere, a dog howls. 

“You may have missed the point of my turning evidence,” he mutters. “I was trying to avoid a life in a four by six cell in the company of a man who tattoos his own eyeballs.” He nods up at the building. “Not pay $700 a month for the privilege.” 

“$900,” Regina says, shrugging her shoulders as his jaw drops. “What? You have terrible references.”

“ _ You’re  _ my reference!”

“Were you always this sulky, or is this a consequence of your new leaf?” she says, curling her lips and her fingers around the words. “Not quite working out how you’d planned?”

Killian scowls and rocks back on his heels.

“Bit rich coming from you, love. Tell me, how many of your dirty little secrets has your mother hushed up?”

It’s Regina’s turn to mutter now, her perfectly groomed brows pulled low.

“Not half as many as I have of hers, as well you know.”

He does know.

Men like him don’t survive being, well, men like him, without being well aware of the seedier aspects of life - of the lies and the bribes and the bullets that it takes to keep money flowing where it oughtn’t and your blood still in your veins. Mostly, at least.

Which is probably why this is such a fucking horrible idea. Regina clearly thinks it’s a fucking horrible idea, anyway.

“This is a horrible idea,” she says in that obnoxious way she’s had since childhood of dragging up the slightest weakness and exposing it to the world. It’s what makes her a good lawyer. It’s what makes her better at pretending than he is. “Do you honestly believe this is going to work out? You turn on Gold and what - he just lets you live out your days in Portland peaceably?”

“I don’t think he’s going to let me do anything,” Killian mumbles, and for a moment he gets a flash of wide, frightened eyes and the rich, thick pulse of blood. A twinge of guilt. “I don’t require permission. Just a place to live. So if you don’t mind?”

Regina checks her watch, tapping her nail against the glass face and sighing loudly.

“I suppose there’s time to get over to the dockside before the offices close - there’s an apartment there above a bar that will be  _ right _ up your street.”

In his mind, he sees blue lights. Hears a cry and the sound of his own pathetic running feet.

The guilt grows, rising up his throat until he’s choking on his reply.

“No.”

“Sorry?”

“Not the docks.”

For the first time in her life, probably, Regina just stares at him, her mouth open. Speechless.

“I’m done with that.”

“You’re done with  _ what?” _

Killian shakes his head and scuffs the toe of his boots through the sidewalk dust.  Regina may have spent her youth in the same circles he ran in - runs  _ from _ now - but money and sheer bullheadedness had been enough to drag her into the light years before he’d even considered it. That Regina had become one of the country’s best lawyers was, for many years, the most unlikely thing he’d thought could ever happen. Then had come his own final straw, the camel’s back collapsing under the weight of a life he’d have done anything to save. Evidence and plea deals and months upon months shut away in safe custody while Regina had worked her magic, but he knows that admitting the truth of why he wishes to avoid the docks, even the vague blood sodden memories of it, would be enough to set her lip curling and send him straight back to the penitentiary cell she’d saved him from.

“It’s supposed to be a fresh start,” he mumbles. 

Regina stares at him, her lips pursed.

“You really have changed, haven’t you?”

He doesn’t react to it, not outwardly at least, but something insidious and slimy crawls along his spine. “No need to sound so shocked. If you can do it -“

“All right, all right.” Regina tosses her head back to try and cover for the furtive glance she throws over her shoulder. “Ixnay on the… history. Okay?”

He smiles, a sly, almost furtive sort of thing. 

“Bit rich coming from you, no?”

Regina’s lips curl back over her teeth and his smile stretches into a full blown smirk.

“No wonder Gold wants you dead,” she mutters. “ _ I  _ want you dead. If you don’t find an apartment soon you’ll  _ be  _ dead, so if you could just -“

There’s a sudden gust of wind that blows Regina’s hair over her face, dark strands sticking to her lipstick and stopping her in her tracks. Killian takes the opportunity to spin on his heel and start walking away, but something catches beneath his boot.

Crumpled pink copier paper, the words that pale blue grey smudge that comes from being the last of a long print run on an overworked machine.

_ Apartment to Let. _

He picks it up, pinching it between two fingers and waving it in Regina’s face like a child who found ten bucks under the bleachers.

“Someone’s looking out for me,” he says. “Wouldn’t you say?”

Regina snatches the flyer from him, examining it with a crease between her brows.

“Unlikely.”

“And yet.”

She sighs, reaching for her phone.

“It’s too cheap you know. I bet it’s got rats. Crawling with them. Or cursed.”

Killian bounces slightly on his toes. It’s bitterly cold in the sharp wind and he’s been standing in the open longer than he’d like.

The walls have eyes and the walls have ears, but at least they block out the wind.

“Well then,” he says, pushing his fists deeper into his pocket. “Sounds perfect.”

—-

It’s uncanny, really. An apartment held in time, plates on the drainer, a golden hair on a rumpled pillow. The curtains are all half drawn, and in the low light the shadows seem to reach out into the room and pluck at the ground beneath their feet.

Cursed.

“Creepy.” Regina’s mouth twists into a sneer as she runs a finger over the TV, the standby light glowing weakly through the layer of dust. “It’s hardly a showhome, is it.”

Killian hums noncommittally, and drops down onto the battered old leather sofa, winging his legs onto the arm and tucking his wrists behind his head.

“Suits me though, don’t you think?”

“Dark, creepy, and cheap.  You to a tee ,” mutters Regina, wiping her hand down the front of her coat. “Apparently it’s some sort of Estate situation. The family just want someone in to pay the bills and keep the pipes running while they sort out the particulars. They won’t be checking in. Distressing, apparently.”

She speaks with the slightly sour expression of someone for whom the grief of others is a foreign and somewhat disturbing concept, as though Killian’s would-be landlords might descend from the ceiling weeping and wailing at any moment and smear cheap mascara on her cashmere scarf.

Empathy was never her strong point.

“Are you sure about this?” she asks him again now, her brows pinched tightly as she takes a final look around.

For now, Killian just hums again and digs his heels into the leather.  There’s a quality to the air he likes. A faint scent of a perfume that lingers on the couch. It feels like a place held in purgatory, and to him, that feels almost like home.

“This is the one,” he says. “This is the one.”

—

It takes four hours for Regina to organise bonds and fake a few references. Five for him to collect his single suitcase from the safe house. Six until he’s so drunk he can’t stand.

He sprawls against the sofa, cheek pressed against the soft woollen blanket, and watches the flickering reflection  of the television in his empty bottle.

Even distorted by drink and the curve of the glass she’s still the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

Her laugh echoes through the room and it makes him want to scream. He doesn’t, of course. He drinks instead. It’s what he does now.

That’s what Regina had told him, that first night in the safe house when his blood had been high and his nerves strung to breaking point. She’d perched primly on the edge of a government issue grey velour armchair and snapped open her briefcase to reveal a decent bottle of rum and two cut glass tumblers.

“More drinking, less thinking,” she’d said as he’d paced the floor, his head throbbing and his heart shattered. “You’ve the rest of your life to regret, Jones. It’s what you do now. Trust me.”

As much as he’d never give her the satisfaction of admitting it, she’d been right.

He’d never thought, before. Not beyond the next deal, next meal, the next moment in a life always lived precariously and purposefully close to the edge. He’d only had himself to care about, and he’d done precious little of that.

And then he’d met her and everything should have changed, and - hadn’t.

Milah had been no angel, an angel would never have looked twice at him. She’d seen enough of the seedy side of life to turn a blind eye or six to his late nights, hidden lockboxes, the stink of bleach and the new carpets. But she’d had a son, once, long lost to the foster system, and in the quiet hours of the morning when they’d shared coffee and cornflakes over the latest headlines he’d started to wonder - 

Kids are expensive, Liam had told him, his face drawn and grey as Killian had run up another underage bar bill. And Killian hadn’t cared, then. He hadn’t cared, but he’d heard anyway. Taken note.

It had been his last job. That’s what he’d told her. He doesn’t know, now, if he’d meant it.

He hopes he had, but he suspects he hadn’t.

In his most sober moments the guilt rises, sour and sickening at the back of his throat, and the memory of Milah’s laugh warps and cracks until it becomes a wild accusation, echoing until it’s nothing but the mad cackle of the man who’d killed her.

So he drinks, and on the screen Milah spins, her white dress flaring around her as she falls laughing into the arms of a man who shares his face.  A man who believed he’d had  _ time _ .

(He drinks, and there’s no one there to see him cry.)

\---

Emma doesn’t remember drinking, doesn’t remember anything really after leaving work, but somebody somewhere must have slipped her something stronger than Mary Margaret’s Labor Day punch. 

Her vision isn’t quite right - everything blurring white at the edges and drifting in and out of focus. Her perspective is off, things seem to be both right at hand and at the other side of the room simultaneously and maybe it’s a migraine but it’s like nothing she’s ever experienced before.

That, or she’s gone crazy.

It’s the only explanation for why she hasn’t called half the precinct on the bum sleeping on her couch.

He makes eye contact with her in the reflection of  _ her  _ tv and she opens her mouth to - 

And light is creeping through the closed blinds and her couch is empty and how is it morning already?

Emma rubs at her temples and shakes her head sharply. A dream. It was just a dream. A dream she should probably be having in bed.

Except obviously she can’t. Because there’s a man in her bed. A dream man.

Not like  _ that _ of course because sure he’s  _ pretty _ but he’s also  _ broken into her house  _ and - she pats frantically at her waist - where the  _ hell _ is her gun?!

He stirs and Emma takes an involuntary step back, eyes darting frantically about as she searches for the baseball bat she knows Henry left lying around and -

Oh God. Oh God, Henry.

The man opens his eyes and their blue on white, a burning, searing -

_ Henry. _

—-

Killian wakes face down on the blanket, the ribbon tickling his nose, to find the dvd menu screen playing the first five bars of Milah’s favourite cheesy love song on an infinite loop and almost guaranteeing that his new neighbors won’t be feeling amenable to lending him any coffee for the hangover he can feel brewing behind his eyes.

He peels himself off the sofa and reaches rather shakily for the remote. It’s been a while since he’s drunk quite this heavily - the cops who watched the safe house didn’t look too kindly on his worst excesses - so he takes a moment to regain his equilibrium, staring at his haggard reflection in the now blank screen and pressing his fingers into the hollows beneath his eyes.

At first he thinks it’s the pressure that does it, he blinks twice but nothing changes. 

There’s a woman.

She’s blonde, her hair falling in waves around her face, and wide eyed as she stands behind Killian’s own reflection. He can see her white knuckled grip on the sofa either side of his shoulders, and the moment shock turns to rage, her face contorting in fury.

Something sparks in the back of his mind, some vague recollection, something familiar in those bright green eyes. But platitudes are slow to come to rum sodden lips, familiarity a distant sober dream, and before he can whip his head round -

She’s gone.

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

He wakes slowly, his eyes creaking open against his will as an entire flock of songbirds bellow at his window.

“Wonderful,” he mutters, squinting at the clock beside the bed. 6:34. “Ideal.”

He blinks blearily at his reflection in the bathroom mirror, letting the steam from the shower blur the edges of his haggard expression, and scrubbs a hand over his too-long beard.

“The fucking state of you,” he mutters. “What the hell would Liam say.”

_ Fuck all, he’s dead,  _ supplies his internal monologue.  _ Dead people don’t judge _ .

“You look like shit.”

He yelps, snatching a towel from the rail and scrabbles to cover himself from the frosty glare of the woman he thought he’d dreamt: blonde and beautiful and absolutely not supposed to be in his bathroom.

“What the fuck?!” he squeaks, mortified, as her eyes flick down his chest to the ragged edge of his threadbare towel. “Get out!”

Her jaw drops, and she makes a choked sort of gasping sound that has him clutch his towel a little closer for the sake of his dignity.

“This is  _ my  _ house!” she growls, hands settling firmly on her hips. “That’s  _ my  _ toothpaste!”

He splutters a little bit, struggling to regain his composure when he’s naked and she’s - well. There.

And now he thinks about it, when did he buy the stripy toothpaste?

He tries not to think about it at all.

“ _ Your _ house?” He scoffs as well as any naked man faces with a furious woman would dare. “I don’t think so love.”

The woman looks him up and down and sneers. It doesn’t improve his towel situation.

“Not your love, not your house, how the hell did -“ She waves her arms in the air and shakes her head. “No. I’m not having this conversation with a figment, goodbye.”

She points to the bathroom door. He settles his weight against the edge of the sink.

“I’m not the figment,  _ you’re  _ the figment! I’m not going anywhere. And if Gold sent you, then his tastes have improved but his tactics absolutely have not. I could cheerfully kill you with six different items in this bathroom and he knows it.”

She does, at least, have the grace to look briefly perturbed by the empty threat. He’s had enough of death. If Gold has sent her, Gold can have him.

God, he’s starting to wish Gold had just had him.

“Who’s Gold?” 

It’s not the most imaginative denial he’s ever heard, but it sounds honest in its confusion.

“Who are  _ you _ ?”

“I live here!” 

“You do  _ not! _ ”

She shakes her head again, but this time it seems to be in exasperation.

“Listen up, buddy, I know you were drunk last night. I’m sorry you’re having a rough time, I’ve been there I get it, but that’s  _ no excuse _ for breaking and entering - get yourself together and get -”

She reaches forward, as though she’s decided to just bodily remove him and be done with it, but before her hand makes contact with his shoulder -

He’s alone with his gooseflesh and the hiss of the still running faucet. The bathroom door still shut firm.

He fumbles behind himself to turn off the water before ripping open the door and half throwing himself into the hallway. She can’t have gone anywhere. He’d have seen her wouldn’t he? Surely. Surely. The blackouts haven’t been this bad for months but -

“Hello?”

His voice echoes back at him from the hallway. From the kitchen he hears the low thrum of the refrigerator, the click of the keurig.

“Hello?”

Beyond that only silence and the sound of his too-fast breathing.

He drops his towel, turns, examines his pale, wide eyed reflection. Behind him the apartment waits. Empty.

“I need a drink.”

—-

Just because a bar opens at 10am doesn’t mean they expect patronage it seems. The young girl on the early shift had eyed Killian’s stumbling entrance with something bordering on disgust, her avocado toast held meaningfully aloft in his direction when he’d dropped a handful of change on the counter with shaking hands.

His hands still shake now, even after two shots of top shelf rum, his fingers tapping rhythmically against the wood as he desperately tries to hide it.

It doesn’t work.

“I’m pretty sure joining you for liquor before noon is not in my remit,” Robin says mildly, sipping at his soda and lime. “Rather the opposite in fact.”

“If you’d had the night I’ve had you’d have backed up all twelve bloody steps as well.”

“You say that like this is unusual behaviour,” Robin says, and lays a hand on Killian’s frantic one. “No excuses, remember?”

“I’m not - this isn’t one of those things you can fix Locksley. It isn’t my emotional state that’s the problem here.”

“Sure, sure,” Robin smiles placatingly and a large, and until recently, dormant, part of Killian wonders what it would feel like to put his fist right through it. “Talk me through it, then. Why am I here?”

“I called you, did you forget?”

“Because?”

Killian groans, rolling his empty glass between his fingers.

“You’ll think I’ve gone mad.”

“Again?” Robin grins, but leans in a little closer, surreptitiously side eyeing the barmaid as he does so. “Come on. You can tell me anything, you know that.”

It’s true that there’s very little of his sordid past that Robin hasn’t dragged out of him over the past two years. Intervention after intervention, night after night holed up in the dark of Regina’s safe room with a gun and a bottle of Pepsi when all he’d craved was rum and the ammunition Robin would keep in his pockets.

So he tells him.

He tells him there’s a woman in his apartment with a sneer that cuts him to the bone and eyes that make him wish he was another man. He tells him about the television. The rum. The shower. He tells him that he is, to all intents and purposes, utterly mad.

He does not tell him that he doesn’t believe in ghosts.

Robin knows just how long Killian has been haunted, after all.

“ - and for god’s sake don’t tell Regina.”

Robin leans back with a low whistle.

“Well that’s certainly an interesting tale.”

“There’s an angry murderous blonde in my apartment. Interesting doesn’t cover it.”

“Not for the first time, either.”

Killian scowls. “They’re not usually dead.”

“Well as the husband of your lawyer I’m both relieved and somewhat worried you felt the need to qualify that statement.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Killian.” Robin leans forward, brow furrowed in concert, and Killian feels his heart sink. “How much have you been drinking lately?”

Killian can’t quite meet his eyes, scrubbing his hand over his face, and he cant exactly deny it. Not when it’s not even 10am and he’s halfway through his third glass.

“Enough. Too much, I expect. But I’m not imagining her, Rob. She  _ spoke  _ to me.”

“Did she tell you to change your ways by Christmas Day or you’ll end up  dying unloved and pickled?  Because I don’t think you need a messenger from the beyond to tell you that. ”

“Charming.” Killian lowers his voice slightly, aware of the barmaids eyes on the back of his head. “She wants me out of her home.”

“Her home?”

“That’s what she seems to think.” He shakes his head and laughs bitterly. “You don’t believe me.”

“Do you find this tale particularly believable?”

“Well, no. No, but -”

“Killian.” Robin reaches over and gently takes the glass from his hand, his face softening into that oh so sympathetic expression that Killian has spent most of the last two years railing against,  and says “There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

They both know he’s lying.

\---

He lets the door creak close behind him, almost holding his breath as he peers down the corridor leading to the living room and then back toward the bedroom.

“No such thing,” he reminds himself. “No such thing.”

“ _ You! _ ”

The shriek seems to echo around the apartment followed by a gust of wind that sends Killian flailing back against the front door only for her to appear directly in front of him, her beautiful face screwed up in fury and her fist half an inch from his nose.

“Oh bloody  _ hell _ !”

“What are you doing back here?!” she hisses. Killian shakes his head , closes his eyes .  She’s still there when he opens them, this time. Her supposed body trembling in anger, two high points of colour in her imaginary cheeks.

He’d never seen Liam like this. Nor Milah. And his stomach roils miserably against the combination of rum and freshly reawakened grief.

Even as he loses his mind he cannot find an ounce of comfort. His own imagination unwilling or unable to conjure him even a semi-friendly face.

“Losing my mind entirely it would seem. Do excuse me, if I’m to go completely mad I’d prefer to do it in the comfort of my bed.”

“My bed,” she spits, and without meaning to he feels the smirk pulling at the corner o his mouth.  He feels wild with it. Ridiculous. A man cut loose, From sanity, from the world, from  _ everything _ , and if he laughs, he laughs madly. And if he frightens her, he’s  _ glad _ _.  _

After all, he’s fucking terrified.

“I’m flattered,” he says, “but that’s a rather complicated level of self-pleasure wouldn’t you agree?”

Her jaw drops, eyes narrow, and he wonders what it says about him that his subconscious has seen fit to torture him with such a beautiful woman who looks at him with such disgust.

“You’re gross,” she says. “Get out.”

“Not likely.” He moves along the wall and makes to head toward the bedroom. “Since you’re a figment of my twisted imagination I’m sure you’re well aware of how poorly I take orders.”

“I’m calling the cops,” she spits, following him into the bedroom, “you’re insane.”

“Clearly.” Killian groans, flopping onto the covers and throwing his arm over his eyes. “But carry on, be my guest. I can’t imagine you’ll have much success.”

“And what exactly is  _ that _ meant to mean? I have contacts you know.”

“Oh do you now,” mumbles Killian. “I’ve heard that before , from people a lot more intimidating than you .”

“I do, I -“ she pauses, brow crinkling as though she’s just realised she’s left the gas on. “I do.”

“Of course, love.” He waves vaguely at her. “Of course. Please inform my hypothalamus that I’m just as fucked as usual will you, and be on your way.”

“Are you  _ drunk _ ?  _ Again _ ?”

He wriggles his brows at her, strangely delighted by the way her mouth twitches when he does.  For a psychotic breakdown, this is rather close to becoming  _ fun _ .

“Darling I’m always drunk.”

She rolls her eyes so hard he practically hears them.

“All right, that’s enough. You’ve had your chance.”

She reaches round him for the phone attached to the hallway wall.

Stops.

The two of them stare together, mouths open in disbelief, as her hand passes straight through the handset as though it were made of air.

Killian rubs his eyes, hard, but nothing changes.

She turns her hand again and again, fingers flexing against edges she can’t touch. She’s trembling, and part of him wishes he could soothe her but his own hands won’t seem to stop shaking. She looks up at him,  those oddly familiar green eyes wide with shock and fear .

“What.” she says. “The. Fuck.”

"You're a bloody figment," he says again, then, bitterly, "It seems I've finally cracked."

“I’m not a figment,” she says, but there’s no relief in her voice. “I’m not.”

“What’s the alternative?” He barks out a bitter sort of laugh. “Everyone knows there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

She bites her lip, staring down at her hand, then looks up at him, mouth open as if to speak and -

He's alone again. 

At the far end of the hallway a bulb flickers and dies.

\----

He can’t sleep. Not through the crying. And the crying doesn’t stop.

He doesn’t see her again, not that night, nor the next morning, but he hears her constantly. A low, pitiful sob that always seems to be coming from everywhere and nowhere all at the same time, and it would be enough to drive him mad if he weren’t already. 

It might be enough to make him believe the evidence of his own eyes. Because if he's not mad, not hallucinating --

A ghost.

He’s living with a ghost.

A deeply, desperately, heartbroken one.

Funnily enough, he rather relates.

He  knows he  should probably leave. That’s what he always mutters to the heroines of the horror movies Robin makes him watch: get out now. No good will come of another night in that place. Run. Run and never return.

But so much of his own life has been a horror movie, and he the foolish anti hero waving a flickering flashlight in the faces of the monsters, that it’s hardly surprising he doesn’t take his own advice.

He follows the tears when they begin again. Finds them, disembodied and agonised in a room he hadn’t thought to explore, one with planets painted on the walls and glow in the dark stars hanging from the ceiling.

He ought to close the door and lock it behind him. He ought to go back to the bar. He ought to do a lot of things. But instead he sits, and he waits.

And she comes.


	4. Chapter 4

There’s no such thing as ghosts. Emma knows this, has always known it, has always been terribly, painfully, aware of the real terrors that go bump in the night, the ones whom no sage or priest could banish.

But now she finds herself standing in Henry’s bedroom, and ghosts are all she can think about.

The bed is made up neatly, the curtains pulled straight, and if that weren’t strange enough the floor is clear of pencils and scraps of paper. There are no lego blocks to stand on. No headless Stomtroopers poking out from under the bed. No festering socks or stained mugs.

It’s pristine.

Silent.

Uncanny.

Haunted.

The floorboards creak behind her, and she blinks, hard.

“Please,” she hisses through clenched teeth. “I don’t know what your game is. I don’t know what you’re trying to do. But just  _ please _ . Tell me what you’ve done with Henry’s things.”

She hears the stranger sigh, but doesn’t turn round.  _ Won’t  _ turn around. Not until she can stop the tears from running down her cheeks.

She won’t give him the satisfaction. She  _ won’t _ .

“Who’s Henry?”

“My - “  _ world. My whole world. _ “My son.”

His intake of breath is so sharp it stirs the hairs on the back of her neck.

“I’m sorry. Truly.”

“What’s  _ happened _ to me!”

“You don’t remember?”

“I don’t -” she casts her mind back as far as she can, but everything seems a little dark, a little hazy. There’s a woman with a snake’s smile and a car the colour of sunshine and - she’d had a job, hadn’t she? She’d had a job. “I was at work?” She spins to face him. “What  _ happened _ ?”

“I don’t know,” he says, and he’s closer than she’d thought he’d be. Kinder. Sharp blue eyes softened in pity and god she hates pity. Hates it. But she’s scared, so scared, and where’s Henry and why doesn’t she  _ know _ -

\---

When she goes, he feels her tears on his own face and closes the bedroom door with a little more reverence than the act really deserves.

He doesn’t drink that night.

She doesn’t cry.

\---

He cooks enough for two and doesn’t really examine why.

He flicks the remnants of the salt over his left shoulder, and, for good measure, scatters a handful around his feet.

“Nice try Buffy, but it’s going to take more than that to get rid of me.”

She’s sharp again, sharp voice and sharp elbows where her arms are folded across her chest, and he’s oddly relieved. 

Better an angry ghost than a broken hearted one, he supposes. He has enough angst of his own to be getting on with. So he smiles.

“Should I try a stake?”

He can see her reflection in the copper bottomed pans, or he might be inclined to try. She leans forward, nose wrinkling as she examines his dinner, and he tenses against the cold draft that follows her movement.

“ No need to judge, love. I wasn’t planning on inviting you to join me.”

She glares at him for a moment, but it’s not as harsh as normal and he feels a twinge of regret. 

“Wouldn’t if I could,” she mutters. Then, louder and a little too bright. “What’s your name?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your name. I figure if you’re insisting on staying here -“

“I’m contractually obligated to stay here.”

“- then you could at least tell me your name.”

He stops stirring, dropping the spoon in the pan with a clang, and turns to face her.

“You first.”

Months he’s been moving from sofa to safe house to haunted apartment. Months and months of shady hire cars and furtive exchanges of money in quiet alleys. Months since he’s shared his real name with anyone who hasn’t had his casebook in their briefcase, stamped and sealed and secured.

(And he doubts Robert Gold controls the dead, but he’s learning not to take the chance.)

They glare at each other for a few moments, and it amazes him the way her eyes flash and her cheeks flush. Like she’s  _ real _ . Alive.

It’s been months since he’s told anyone his real name, but now he finds he wants to.

“All right,” she says eventually. “I’ll bite.”

(It’s been months since he might have met that comment with a smirk, a quip, a promise for later.

Years.)

He lifts an eyebrow when she hesitates, and he wonders if this is the moment his brain finally gives up on the charade - if it can create her, flirt with her, fight with her, but not name her.

“Well?”

Her mouth moves, brows furrowed.

“Swan?” she asks. His other eyebrow goes up.

“You sound uncertain.”

“Sounds like a fake name,” she says, and her nose wrinkles in distaste. “Don’t you think?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he lies. “You tell me.”

“You’re obnoxious.”

“So I hear.”

She -  _ Swan -  _ huffs out a long suffering sort of breath and he smiles despite himself.

“It’s not funny,” she mumbles, rubbing at her temples, “I can’t -“ she shakes her head and he’s shocked to see tears glistening in her eyes. “What’s the  _ matter _ with me?”

“Well,” he says, mouth running away with him, “you are dead.”

He regrets it immediately - before her face crumples or her back is turned - the callous simplicity of the words tasting wrong in his tongue. He can’t apologise quickly enough but she’s already gone - a flash of gold and red down the corridor toward the door and he thinks for a moment he might have actually driven her away. Then she stops by the closed door to the spare bedroom. Stops. Shudders. Walks straight through.

And just like every heroine in every horror movie, he follows.

\---

It’s not often he manages to strike Regina speechless - this might only be the second time in fact - and he reckons that if he were to ask her, right this moment, whether she’d been more shocked when he told her he was going straight or now she would struggle to choose.

“Close your mouth, your majesty,” he mutters, pushing her coffee cup into her hand. “Your veneers are showing.”

“I don’t have veneers, I have a dental plan. It’s called health insurance, Jones. I hear they even offer psychological help.”

“Is that a suggestion?”

“Ghosts.” Regina says, rather in the same disgusted way  that  Liam might have said  _ Airforce _ . “Ghosts.”

“Actually, just the one ghost,” Killian says, and takes a swig of his own drink. “It’s not an infestation, just a little - unnerving.”

“Unnerving.” Regina says. Killian lifts an eyebrow.

“Is there an echo? I’m simply asking you to contact the landlords. Perhaps they can shed some light on the situation.”

Regina’s mouth thins - a warning sign he’s very used to by now - and she shakes her head.

“And ask what? If they’ve had the place exorcised lately? This is nonsensical, Jones.”

“Aye that it is. Doesn’t make it any less true.”

“And say that it is,” she continues, “I’m your lawyer. What exactly do you expect me to do about it? Issue a Cease and Desist to the deceased?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Oh, I’m ridiculous?” Regina leans in over the kitchen table and speaks through gritted teeth. “Do you have  _ any  _ idea what I’m going through for you right now? Any idea at all? I’m spending every hour god sends chasing down this city’s  _ useless _ police department - “

“Pardon?”

She sits back and folds her arms over her chest.

“Nevermind.”

Killian copies her pose.

“Nevermind? Certainly, love. It’s only my life at stake here. Why should I concern myself with something as minor as my own survival?”

“Well at least you know there’s an afterlife.”

“ _ Regina _ .”

“Fine!” 

She leans forward, looking from side to side as though checking for eavesdroppers in his own kitchen, and the back of his neck prickles.

“He’s on to you.”

“Who?”

It’s a stupid question. One Regina treats with the contempt it deserves.

“Gold of course!” She scoffs out a laugh. “Unless there’s another organised crime kingpin with a price on your head? Can’t say I’d be surprised.”

“I pick my battles,” Killian  lie s, and Regina laughs - hard and bitter. 

“You do exactly the opposite, Jones. You’ve spent most of your adult life in and out of trouble, you’ve worked for some of the worst -”

“I never worked for them.”

“No,” Regina sneers. “No, that’s your schtick, isn’t it? You’re a  _ free man.  _ A moral  _ pirate _ . Don’t pretend you’re turning evidence against Gold for society's sake, Jones. You’re hardly Robin Hood.”

“A little rich coming from you, wouldn’t you say?” Killian grits out. “Tell me, exactly how pure and moralistic was  _ your _ life before your Robin arrived?”

“That’s different,” Regina mutters, folding her arms over her chest.

Killian raises a brow. “Is it?”

“I chose to be better - for Robin and for  _ myself.  _ You all you wanted was revenge. Milah -”

Killian stands, shoving his chair back from the table with a screech.

“That’s  _ enough _ . Don’t bring her into this.”

The corner of Regina’s mouth ticks up into a wry sort of smile.

“All right,” she says. “Let’s say you’ve truly changed your ways. Become some regular joe , just a drunk who spends his nights alone and hallucinating.”

“You paint a beautiful picture.”

“The truth, you mean?”

Killian stands up straight, and gestures towards the door.

“If there’s nothing else -?”

Regina rolls her eyes, but stands and gathers up her bag.

“As your lawyer and the closest thing you have to a friend, Jones, I’m telling you. Forget whatever wild obsession you’ve developed with Discovery ghost shows and concentrate on keeping your head  _ down _ . It’s a month until  you’re due in court, and I dread to think how much it would cost to get this hideous carpet cleaned if, in the meantime, Gold decides to blow out what little brain you possess.”

“Love you too!” Killian calls after her.  The door slams behind her, as final as a gunshot .

If he tries not to wince, he fails.

“That sounded intense.”

Swan is leaning against the edge of the kitchen counter, the marble pattern just visible through her abdomen, and looking after Regina with a furrowed brow.

“Ah, so you were hovering. I suspected as much. You couldn’t have thrown a glass or two to prove my point?”

Swan rolls her eyes. “I don’t do party tricks.”

Killian grins. “Pity, it’s almost Halloween. We could make quite the team.”

“Unlikely.” She narrows her eyes at him. “Who’s Gold?”

“A man who by all rights should be the one who’s dead, love. But never you mind him. You have enough concerns of your own I’ll wager.”

“She couldn’t see me, you know.” She places her hands on her stomach and looks at them, almost mystified. “I was stood right behind you the whole time and she just - looked right through me.”

“Well that could just be Regina, love. She isn’t known for her manners.”

“Do you really think I’m dead?”

His mouth works, but the words - the obvious words - just don’t seem to come out. She sighs, shakes her head, and the light catches at her hair like a halo.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Do you recall anything?” he asks, quickly enough that he hopes she’ll miss his lack of denial. “Anything at all about before - well, before?”

“Nothing,” she says. “It’s like… you ever wake up from a dream and you just can’t…” she waves her hands in front of her face. “It’s like it’s just there and then  _ poof _ . Gone.”

“Poof,” he says, lips tugging into a smile. “You create quite the image, love.”

“Yeah well. If I could magic my life back that would be great. Know any witches?”

“Well you’ve met Regina, but I don’t think memory spells are in her repertoire.” 

“You’re cute.”

“I try.”

There’s a pause. One just overlong moment where the two of them stare at each other, and Killian wonders, not for the first time, why anything so beautiful would be stuck on this earth. With him.

Maybe she isn’t the one who’s dead, after all. This looks more like his heaven than hers. Except -

“Who’s Milah?”

“Pardon?”

Emma nods down at his arm and he barely resists the urge to clutch at his forearm with his other hand.

“In the tattoo?”

He looks down at his shirtsleeve and then back up at her with ill disguised suspicion.

“How did you..?”

Swan huffs, and tosses her hair over her shoulder.

“I’ve seen you naked, remember?”

Killian smirks, and hopes she doesn’t notice the flush he can feel rising in his cheeks.

“I’m flattered you recall my nudity so clearly when you can’t recall your own name.”

“What can I say,” Swan drawls, one eyebrow quirked delightfully. “Weird naked man in my house. Made an impression.”

“Weird?” Killian clutches at his chest. “You wound me.”

“I’ve tried,” mutters Swan. “Don’t change the subject.”

“The subject?” 

“Milah.”

“Ah.”

Swan nods. “Ah.”

“Nothing to tell,” Killian says, but his jaw is too tight for his smile to look natural and he can see the crease forming between Swan’s brows. “Or at least nothing to interest you.”

“You loved her, you mean.” Swan says, and it sounds almost sweet from her mouth. Almost like a happy memory. Entirely too past tense. “Did this Gold -“

“I  _ said  _ I don’t wish to discuss it.”

He hadn’t realised he’d stood until he finds himself glaring down at her, her green eyes fiery as she meets his stare with her own, and in that moment he knows,  _ knows _ that he’s in more trouble here than he’d thought he could be. Far more.

There are worse things in life than death, after all. 

Even if in this case… it might still be somewhat involved.

And he’s going to have to do something about it, because he doesn’t know how many more times he can look into those eyes before he’s gone as mad as Regina thinks  he has .

“What do you want to discuss then,” Swan says, “I’ve got all eternity after all.”

“About that.” He whips out his phone and waves it slightly in front of her face. “I think I’ve got an idea.”


	5. Chapter 5

Jones.

The  word hammers through her already aching head, claws at the back of her stinging eyes. It matters. It  _ matters _ .

She can’t figure out why. 

She can’t even see.

She glares at Jones,  because that’s his name, apparently, through the thick, acrid haze of incense and scuffs at the pentagram scrawled on the floor with the tip of her shoe. The chalk remains stubbornly untouched, of course.

“This is pointless,” she mutters. “What exactly are you expecting to happen?”

“Bright lights?” he says without looking up from his phone. “Choirs of angels?”

“Not very fucking likely,” Swan scoffs. “Do I look like the choir of angels type?”

He looks up then, and in the brief moment before his smirk appears, she sees something in his expression that makes her breath catch. Her breath that she shouldn’t have. When the following choking fit finally subsides, he drops his phone beside him with a sigh.

“This isn’t as effective as I might have hoped.”

“Because it’s stupid,” she splutters.”This is stupid.”

“Well forgive me, Swan, I’m not exactly an expert in the occult. And apparently nor is Google”

“Call Zak Bagans then,” Emma mutters. “I’ll give his spirit box a work out.”

Jones lifts an eyebrow. “I’m sure he’d be delighted.”

“Shut up.”

“Although you do rather have a point,” Jones says. “Perhaps an expert is what is required here.”

“I am  _ not _ going on tv.”

“Nor I, love, believe me.” Jones laughs shortly. “ _ Believe _ me. But perhaps there’s a somewhat more subtle way of accessing the help you require?”

“Ghostbusters?”

“A somewhat unusual definition of subtle.”

“Fine.” Emma folds her arms over her chest and scowls. “What do you suggest?”

Killian picks up his phone and winks.

“Okay google, find me the nearest paranormal enthusiast.”

“You’re  _ joking _ .”

  
  


\--

It’s not quite Barnes and Noble.

From the outside the bookshop looks like a place out of time, the thick glass of the leaded windows warped with age and reflecting an image of himself that he barely recognises. Which was rather the point, of course, but he wasn’t expecting to feel quite as uncomfortable in his own skin as he does. The door creaks open like a hammer horror prop, and the wooden boards at the threshold creak beneath his feet.

From behind the dark wood counter, a young lady with dark hair and large eyes looks up at him with something like alarm.

“Atmospheric,” he says by way of greeting. “I assume I’m in the right place?”

“Excuse me?”

“I hear,” he says, “that the proprietor of this shop is somewhat of an expert on… unusual matters.”

“It’s been said before, yes,” she says with a note of caution. 

“Then perhaps you could be of assistance?”

“Rather depends on the unusual matters,” she says, and Killian holds back a wince. Even here, in this musty old store full of mustier, older books, he feels more than a little ridiculous saying the words.

“Paranormal matters. A haunting, in fact.”

“Really.”

“You sound surprised,” says Killian. “Are you unaware that you run a store that holds the third highest google listing for occult and psychic paraphernalia?”

The young woman looks at him for a long, excruciating moment. 

“You don’t look the type,” she says, finally. Killian tugs uncomfortably at the bottom of his beige fisherman’s sweater and pushes his glasses up his nose. Perhaps his usual leather would have fitted the aesthetic a little better, but he’s worse things to hide from than a shopkeeper’s suspicious glances.

“Dark horse,” he says, and smiles. “Truly, I’d appreciate the help.”

“Well,” she says, her nose wrinkling, “okay.”

\---

Her name’s Belle, and she’s very sweet, if a little unusual in her predilections. He has met many many people through the years - good and bad, though mainly bad - but never has he met someone who can discuss demonic possession in such a straightforward and softly spoken manner.

“I don’t think she’s a demon.”

Belle shakes her head in that gently pitying manner that the very intelligent use when dealing with the very stupid.

“That’s exactly what demons want you to think.”

“No, but truly - “

“All right.”

Belle leans back in her office chair. The store itself is locked now, and Killian has been invited back into her inner sanctum - a place no less full of books but considerably brighter and less dusty than the shopfloor.

_ People like the aesthetic _ , she’d told him apologetically as he’d sneezed his way through the first tower of books she’d carried through.  _ Personally I prefer Pledge _ .

“I can’t say I’ve ever heard of a haunting like this before. Normally you get sporadic activity. Sounds, mainly. Shadows. You say she acknowledges you?”

“We talk,” Killian says, and smiles. “My charms don’t work on her quite as well as I’d like.”

“I can’t imagine why,” says Belle drolly. “But that - that’s almost unheard of. This whole story seems - incredible.”

“Believe me, I’m well aware.”

“Well then.” Belle stands so swiftly that Killian almost pushes his chair over in his haste to follow. 

“Well?”

Belle smiles at him, and throws her cape over her shoulders.

“This I’ve got to see.”

—-

They traipse back to his - to Swan’s - apartment in the gathering dusk, and Killian fights the urge to look back at the headlights he knows are over his shoulder, to reach for a gun he no longer carries when he hears somewhere in the distance the squeal of tyres.

Regina’s face flits across his mind’s eye. The way she’d been a little paler this morning, her lipstick a little less perfectly applied, and he’s glad that Belle is half jogging in her enthusiasm because the more the shadows lengthen the more he begins to think he’s made a terrible mistake. He remembers the safety phrase, practises it in his own mind over and over as he leads a stranger back to his home.

He knows he’s taking a risk allowing Belle - allowing  _ anyone _ \- back to the apartment. After all it’s not like Gold doesn’t have contacts in the strangest places. Back when Killian had first met him he’d had his claws in pies as diverse as fine art and human trafficking. It certainly wouldn’t be beyond him to have an interest in life after death. To have contacts.

Belle smiles her sweet smile at him as he takes her cape, and he tries very hard to shove his suspicious nature to the back of his mind.

“What a beautiful apartment,” Belle says, eyes wide and almost uncannily honest as she takes in the few trinkets that someone - that Swan, he supposed - had collected over the years. “Very homely.”

“I’m lead to believe that that’s not quite a compliment in this country,” Killian says, but he still smiles. “But I shall take it as one.”

“You should,” Belle says, and  shakes her head. “No wonder she doesn’t want to leave.”

“I’m not sure that’s entirely -“

“Really?!” Swan appears in the living room doorway, face creased in anger and hands firm on hips. “Date night? A bit of warning might have been nice.”

Killian winces.

“It isn’t -“

“Oh oh,” Swan holds her hands up in the air and shakes her head. “Don’t let me stop you after all it’s - oh, wait, no. I take that back.  _ No sex in my house _ .  _ Ever. _ ”

Killian fishes furiously for a reply but before he can offer more than a pleading gesture, Belle speaks.

“Hello, Swan. Or should I call you Emma?”

Both Swan and Killian stop and stare at her, jaws hanging open.

“That is your name, isn’t it?” Belle says gently. “Emma Swan?”

“Emma Swan,” Killian half whispers, the words soft against his lips. “Emma.”

“Can you -“ He sees the way Swan -  _ Emma’s - _ throat works as she swallows. “Can you see me?”

“I -“ Belle reaches out a hand in Swan’s direction and they both watch as her fingers brush up against, and then through, her jacket. Swan shudders and Belle snaps her arm back to her side. “I’m so sorry,” she says. “Truly. This must be so very awful for you.”

“I’ve lived through worse,” Emma says wryly, smiling slightly as Killian scoffs. “So you can? See me I mean?”

“Not really,” Belle admits, “not the way he sees you. You must have some sort of - connection. I’ve never - this is unique, a real first.”

Belle bounces slightly on her toes, clearly thrumming with excitement, and Emma sighs.

“Wonderful. Just what I needed. Not only am I dead but I’m  _ extra specially  _ dead.”

“Could be worse,” Killian says cheerfully. 

“Could it?”

“Wait!” Belle throws her arms out to the sides and scrunches her eyes shut. “There’s something wrong here.”

“Really? I’d never have guessed,” mutters Emma, but Belle shushes her quickly.

“There’s an energy here all right - something dark and terrible. But it isn’t Emma. It’s -” Belle opens her eyes, and turns them on Killian. “It’s you.”

“Pardon?”

“Oh,” Emma folds her arms and grins at him. “This ought to be good.”

“No! No, it’s - it’s awful.” Belle shakes her head. “Your aura is - ”

“Your  _ aura _ ,” Emma crows. Killian scowls.

“This really isn’t -”

“Milah says you have to let go.”

“ _ Pardon _ ?”

“The woman - the one who died - she was shot? Someone was shot.”

“No, she - "

“She says let her go. Let it all go, Killian. It’s  _ too late _ ”

“I feel the urge to sing,” Emma says, but Killian can’t quite look at her. He’s too focused on the way Belle’s eyes grow wide and wet. On the way she wrings her hands together, twisting a ring around and around her finger.

“You need to get out,” she says, pleading this time. “Nothing good will come of this, Killian. You can’t win.”

“Can’t win what?” Emma sounds nervous now. He sees her flickering in his peripheral vision. “Is this something to do with me?”

“No -”

“Yes!” Belle spins to face Emma, forcing her to step back until the coffee table protrudes from her knees. “Emma, you have to wake up.”

Her eyes flick between them, her laugh that sort of nervous breath that borders on hysteria.

“Is that a political statement, or?”

“You’re not dead - not yet - you  _ must  _ wake up.”

“I’m not?”

“No. No.” Belle shakes her head. “I should - I should go.”

“Hey!” Emma steps forward and grabs for Belle’s shoulder. Her hand passes straight through and she hisses in discomfort. “God damn that’s cold. You can’t just leave!”

Part of Killian knows he should step in, should demand answers, demand help, but instead he just watches as Belle shakes her head and Emma growls with frustration.

“I’ve already said too much,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

She looks from Killian to Emma and back again and offers a half hearted smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Good luck,” she says. “I mean that. Really. Good luck.”

But all Killian really hears are the words she doesn’t say.

_ You’re going to need it. _

\---

Belle leaves, brows furrowed and cape wrapped around her slim shoulders as she disappears into the darkening streets.

Something about her hunched shoulders makes the hairs stand up at the back of Emma’s neck. Makes her hover between the front door and the sofa where Jones sits, perched on the edge like a man considering jumping, and - 

Panics.

She’s not dead.

She tastes bile, sways, sees the colour drain from Jones’ face as he stands.

She’s not dead, and somehow, somehow, it’s worse.

“Hey,” he says, approaching her as though she’s a skittish animal. “Hey it’s okay.”

“What part of  _ any  _ of that sounded okay to you?”

“She’s just talking nonsense,” he tries, “Swan -“

“Emma,” she says, and the word tastes wrong in her mouth. Like a secret she shouldn’t be able to tell. “She says my name’s Emma.”

Jones tilts his head and lowers his voice. It makes her want to cry.

“And is it?”

“I don’t  _ know,”  _ she half shouts. “I don’t know! And if I’m not dead - if I’m not dead Jones, shouldn’t I  _ know _ ?”

“If you’re asking me what the rules of these particular circumstances are I’m not sure I’ll be of much help. But -“

“But  _ what _ ?”

“If what she says is true - if you are alive - then surely this can only be a positive turn of events? You’ll see your boy again.”

“My… boy?”

Jones closes his eyes,  pained for reasons she can’t bear to guess at ,  and Emma buries her face in her cold hands.

“What the hell am I going to do?”

“We.” She looks up, and the pained expression is gone, replaced with a fierce sort of determination that makes his eyes flash and her breath catch. “I promised you, remember?”

“Yeah, when you thought you could exorcise me.”

“Then let us start afresh.” He grins at her. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance,  _ Emma.” _

He rolls the word around his mouth and a petulant part of her wants to scowl at him. Bite her name from his lips and send him reeling. And she doesn’t know where that came from but she didn’t know her own name until she heard it from his mouth and isn’t  _ that _ just a turn up for the books.

“Tell me what happened to you.”

“Sorry?” He looks at her blankly and she can feel the irritation creeping up her spine.

“Don’t be an idiot.”

“Some might say that would be breaking the habit of a lifetime, love.”

He’s smiling again but it’s disingenuous.  _ Infuriating _ .

“Oh give the mystery schtick a rest will you? I heard what she said to you too, y’know. Whatever the hell’s going on here seems to be as much to do with you as with me.”

“Nonsense, what matters -”

She growls, irritation turning into rage, her fists clenched against the urge to launch themselves into that false smile. Not that it would work, of course. None of this works. None of this makes any goddamn  _ sense _ .

Luckily for him Jones isn’t as much of an idiot as that smile makes him look.

“I’ve done some terrible things, Swan.”

“So I figured.”

“No, I -” he takes a deep breath and seems to physically deflate with the exhale. “I don’t think I’ve ever really admitted that before.”

“Not even to your lawyer?”

“Never admit  _ anything _ to your lawyer, love.”

“I’ll take that on board.” She perches herself next to him as best she can, and rests her chin on her hand. “Tell me?”

He shakes his head. “Which part?”

“Whichever part you want.”

He sits in silence, just long enough that Emma’s beginning to wonder if he’s decided he’d rather not share any part of it at all, before balling his hands into fists and glaring down at them.

“I’ve killed people, Swan. I didn’t - “ he barks out a laugh. “I didn’t  _ mean _ it. I just didn’t  _ care _ . All I cared about was money and how to get it - I - ”

“I don’t believe you,” She shocks herself with her own vehement certainty, but not half as much as she shocks him, his jaw dropping as he turns to her. “I don’t believe you could just not care.”

“I’m not the man you think I am,” he mutters, but she’s the one shaking her head now. “Swan - ”

“No. Tell me again. From the start. You want me to believe you’re that awful? That you’d just, what? Shoot someone in cold blood? You want me to believe that, then make me.” 

In his defence, he tries.

He dwells on the nastiness, on the drugs and the guns and the sawn off registration numbers. He makes himself the villain, cursed and damned by his own greed, but Emma might not recognise her own reflection but she recognises the flash of pain in his eyes when he recalls a deal gone bad. Notes the tightness of his clawed fists as he shudders out -  _ and Milah… _

And Milah had died. And Milah haunts him far more than Emma ever could.

She tries to ignore the hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach as tears track down his cheeks.

“She knew the risks,” she says, an attempt at comfort as he squeezes his eyes shut. “She -”

“Deserved  _ better _ .” He spits the words. “I was a coward. I’m still a coward.”

“You’re not - you’re turning evidence against, what, the goddamn mafia? You’re the complete opposite of a coward.”

“A brave man would have shot Gold where he stood.”

“Why didn’t you? You tell me you’re a murderer, so what’s one more?”

His hands finally relax and he rubs them across his reddened eyes. “Would you believe I wanted - I think I wanted to be better. As though that would matter, after everything I’ve done.”

Emma nods slowly, considering, and watches as the rapid movement of his chest calms and his shoulders stop shaking.

“You never actually told me your name, you know. I had to eavesdrop.”

He smiles, a gentle little thing utterly at odds with the tale he’s told her. “Killian. My name’s Killian.”

It shouldn’t matter, his name. It should just be another random fact about a man she should never have met - that she wishes with all her heart she never had met -

But as strange as her life has become, perhaps the strangest thing of all is that it does. It matters.

“You matter,” she tells him, for lack of anything more comforting to say. “I believe that you matter.”

“And I you,” he says. “Truly.”  He holds out his hand. She stares at it for a moment, mind whirring, before she shakes her head.

“Not much point in that,” she says glumly. 

Killian wriggles his fingers, smiling that little lop sided smile.

“Live a little?”

“Rude.”

He sighs and takes a step closer.

“We  _ will _ figure this out,” he says solemnly. “You and I - for whatever reason - we are rather alike. Lost souls you might say.”

_ “You  _ might.”

“Aye, and I do. But two heads are better than one. And you can’t exactly put pen to paper in your condition.”

Emma narrows her eyes. 

“So what exactly are you suggesting?"

“We’re going to fix this,” he says. “Together. Deal?”

Emma lifts her own hand to hover above his. “Deal.”

He leans down and drops a kiss to her palm, and in  her shock she almost doesn’t notice - 

It’s warm.


	6. Chapter 6

He feels her before he sees her. Her presence creeping into his dreams, the edges of the darkness softening slightly in her golden light. It’s nice. Soothing. Some sort of a balm to his troubled soul.

He’s pretty sure in reality she’s tapping her foot.

The briefest flickering of his eyelids and he’s proven correct.

“If you’re going to watch a man sleep can you perhaps carry some chains or something? Perhaps let out the odd pitiful wail? Just a touch of warning?”

“Sounds cheesy.” Emma flops down, ending up sitting somewhere around halfway down the mattress, her knees rising through the eiderdown. “And less fun. Now get up.”

“I am up,” Killian mutters, then opens one eye and grins at the extravagant way Emma rolls her eyes.

“You’re disgusting.”

“And you’re in my bed, Swan. Quite literally in fact.”

“My bed,” she snaps back, then groans. “That doesn’t actually make it any better, does it.”

“Depends on your definition of better, darling.”

“I’m kind of over splitting hairs,” she grumbles, and he opens both eyes then. Sits up. 

“You sound…”

“Pissed off?” Emma kicks out her foot, hard enough that it ought to send him reeling back on the bed but instead just sends a shock of goosebumps up his spine. “Yeah, kinda.”

“Care to share?”

“Sort of gotta, don’t I.” She rises only to disappear through the locked bedroom door. “Come on.”

He follows. What else can he do.

It isn’t as though he hasn’t spent enough of his life chasing ghosts already.

She leads him into the living room to where his phone lies, battery pathetically depleted, on the coffee table, and gestures to it. “I need you for this part.”

He blinks. It’s early. He’s yet to truly comprehend the bizarre clusterfuck his life has become.

“I don’t follow.”

Swan rolls her eyes. “Okay Google.” The phone screen remains dark. “You see my problem?”

Killian picks up the phone and raises an eyebrow at the battery level. 

“Have you been trying this all night?”

“When you’re dead let me know if you have anything better to do.”

“I thought we had agreed death was a premature diagnosis?”

“Well I  _ figured _ ,” she nods to the phone, “that there was a pretty easy way to find out. Maybe I have hundreds of weeping Instagram followers or something."

“You don’t strike me as the type.”

“To be honest I don’t strike me as the type, but it seems like a place to start.  At least I've got a name now."

"Always a silver lining," Killian agrees, swiping his way into the phone. Regina had left some pretty specific instructions as to how and when the thing was to be used, but then this wasn't exactly on her list of likely scenarios. He can explain his search history later. Perhaps after she has him committed. "What do you want me to look for?"

"Me," Emma says, eyeing the way he handles the phone with ill disguised jealousy. "It's 2020. I must be out there somewhere."

" Emma Swan," he says quietly as he types "Lifestyle blogger or fashion influencer?"

"I have no idea what either of those things are so I feel like I'm gonna go with 'neither'."

"Ha!" Killian crows, holding the phone aloft. "Here you are!" 

On the screen is a Facebook profile,locked down to private with nothing but the state and the name visible, but there's a profile picture. God, there's a profile picture.

She moves to take the phone from him, but her fingers just pass through the screen, through the image of the smiling woman with her face and the dark haired boy in her arms.

"Emma Swan," Killian says, "meet Emma Swan."

Emma Swan smiles up at her, her chin half hidden in the boys hair.

"Is that?"

Killian's smile fades.

"You told me his name is Henry."

She lets her hand hover over the image, until Killian moves to search again.

"Perhaps if I search the news?"

"No!" Her hand catches at his before he can type another word. He gapes at her. "No. I - I don't know if I want to know. Not yet."

Killian's throat bobs as he swallows, before bidding his agreement. 

"If you're sure - but Swan -"

"What?"

"Look."

He nods down at their joined hands.

She half pulls away before she realises, only the pressure of Killian's fingers - gentle but firm - holding her in place. He goes to move but she stops him with a cry, her other hand wrapping around his wrist.

"Emma?" He hesitates, his voice cracking on her supposed name. " Is that - can you -"

"You're so warm." She shakes her head, thunderstruck. "I'd forgotten what it felt like."

She just stares helplessly as he lifts her hand to his face and places it palm down against his cheek.

"You need a shave."

"Do I?" he laughs, but it's not like any laugh she's heard from him before. This one is high and clear and real. "Emma, I'm holding your hand!"

"Yeah - yeah I guess you are."

Shes prevented from saying anything less idiotic as he suddenly flips her hand over and presses his lips to the juncture of wrist and palm.

"Feel that?" He looks up at her through his lashes, the heat from his touch suffusing through her veins.

"You're… you're holding my  _ hand. _ "

If he'd rejected the way she launches herself into his lap she'd have made out it was some sort of test, but what it  _ is _ is a sudden overwhelming urge to be held, especially by someone looking at her the way Killian looks at her now.

Awestruck. The expression suits him. She intends to wipe it off him regardless. She fists her hands into his sweater and fits her thighs tight against his own.

"This is for science," she tells him firmly, shaking his clothing for emphasis. "Don't get any ideas."

"Perish the thought," he says solemnly, sighing gently as she leans into him. "God, I wish I could feel you."

Emma pauses, frowning. "You can't feel me?"

"Not the way -" Killian moves to rest his forehead against hers. "not the way that I'd want to. No - dont, don't go."

She stills again, runs her thumb over his lower lip and watches his eyelids flutter closed.

"Just research, then," she promises, his breath on her cheek as he pulls away to look at her. "Is that - is that okay?"

"And the hypothesis?" Killian kicks his lips, his eyes darkening, and god but his hands are hit where they rest on her sides. How could she not have noticed the cold before?

Emma smiles, a little wickedly.

"Do I remember the taste of rum?"

She does.

\---

It’s been a very, very long time since anyone last shared his bed. He can’t say that on the very few occasions he’d allowed himself to imagine it again it had been anything like this.

Sex, he understands. Has always understood. Has used on his worst days, and treasured on his better, but what had happened between them last night had been -- something entirely different. He’d allowed her to take more than just the warmth from his body, encouraged it, even, although her hands felt like an icy wind, her mouth a static thrill. But although he couldn’t feel her, not the way he wanted to, not with his body, his hands, his mouth -- his soul? His soul is something else entirely.

Funny, until this morning he’d never been entirely sure he had one.

Emma lies beside him, the entire length of her body pressed against his. His skin buzzes with electricity where they touch, his skin flush with gooseflesh from the chill, but he cannot move. Daren’t. Won’t. Her leg is thrown over his thigh and then tucked beneath his opposite knee. Her fingers are entwined between his where their hands rest on his chest, and he wishes with a desperation he hasn’t felt in  _ years _ that he knew how they’d felt when they were soft, and warm, and alive.

Her chest rises and falls through the thin layer of his sheets and he watches, and wishes, and hopes.

He tries not to think that she sleeps like the dead.

His phone is on the nightstand where he’d dropped it, and he reaches for it carefully, conscious that even though he cannot feel the weight of her against him any swift movement on his part might still wake her.

Emma might not want to know the details of what befell her, but he can’t help but wonder.

Vengeance had always been a sort of speciality of his. Gold used to take great pleasure in it, sending Killian off to meet with a turncoat or a debtor. Perhaps he’d known, even then, that Killian’s heart was not entirely his to control. But Killian had his orders, and Killian had carried them out.

The bloodstains and the oaths Gold received on his return were always met with that lizard-like smile and a hum of satisfaction that had made Killian’s stomach turn, but for Emma -

For Emma, he thinks he might actually enjoy it.

Her image smiles up at him from his search history, and he taps the link below. Local news. Six weeks old.

Local Woman in Coma After Attempted Murder 

His blood runs cold. His eyes scan the article, but his mind barely comprehends any of it, because there, there beside the photograph of Emma’s smile, is an image of an alleyway. Dark, and dingy, strewn with police tape and horribly, sickeningly familiar.

_ Local woman Emma Swan, 33, was shot - _

The bang. He remembers the bang. The cool of the gun in his pocket. That night at the docks, the night that’s been lingering, half remembered and stinking of gunpowder, comes back to him in glorious, terrible technicolour.

_ \- witnesses say a man was seen running - _

He remembers running. Vomit on his shoes. His heart thundering.

\-  _ condition is Critical - _

The flash of green. A smear of yellow and red in the alleyway. Abandoned. Forgotten. Emma.

Oh God, Emma.

His phone arcs through the air and lands with a crunch at the end of the bed. Emma stirs awake and blinks blearily up at him. It’s all he can do not to scream.

He launches himself from the bed and Emma skitters to her feet after him, her hand outstretched.

“Killian?”

“ _ Don’t.”  _ He balls his hands into fists so tight they draw blood. “For God’s sake,  _ don’t _ .”

“Don’t  _ what _ ?” Her eyes grow wide and the colour drains from her cheeks. “Is this - is this about today?”

The look in her eyes only makes him feel worse, the idea that she could believe for even one second that he - that he wasn’t - that he didn’t - but he couldn’t, of course. How could he possibly tell her now. 

He loves her. He loves her, and he’s taken everything from her. Again.

Everything he’s ever loved, he’s killed.

“God, Jesus, no. No. This was - “ he chokes on the words. “Oh God, Emma, Emma you have to go.”

“Go where?”

“Anywhere! Anywhere, God. But you can’t stay here. You can’t be anywhere near me.”

“I don’t know what you’re -”

His phone blares to life on the bedroom floor, the cracked screen flashing Regina’s name into the space between them. Emma’s mouth moves, but Killian’s past hearing her - past hearing anything but the frantic beat of his own heart. Emma. That night at the bar.  _ Emma _ . Guilt rises until he gags on it, the wailing phone ignored as he retches onto the floor. There’s static at his back, a gentle hand he doesn’t deserve, and it’s more to dislodge her than any other desire that has him fumbling blindly for the phone.

“ _ What _ .”

“Killian, listen -”

He shakes his head, presseas the phone closer to his ear. “No.”

“Jones!” It’s a hiss and a cry and a whisper all at once and the bile in his stomach freezes at the sound of it. “Jones, they’ve found us.”

The bedroom floor sways like the deck of Liam’s boat, the chill at his back a hideously ironic constant as Regina speaks and the world crumbles. “Robin and I are playing princesses.”

He knows what that means. Caught. Hiding. Police protection. The safe house. His phone is already compromised, or Regina would never have called. His home is compromised. He’s compromised.

Compromised is such a nice word compared to  _ fucked _ .

He thinks of Robin, kind and decent and with shit taste in rum. Of Regina’s fierce and sometimes unwelcome determination. Of the bank of frozen embryos he knows they’ve staked all their hopes on and what it means to have to leave your lives behind. He thinks of the long, long wait for court, and of appeals. He thinks of Emma’s eyes, and the gun in his closet.

He thinks of all the things they’ve lost, of all the people lost. Of everything that would be, should be, if it wasn’t for  _ him _ . Him, and  _ Gold. _

“Understood,” he says, gruff and nauseated but certain as can be. “Have fun.”

Regina’s still talking as he hangs up. He’s given the wrong codeword, this is the wrong plan - taking the gun, cold in his hand and heavy with the cost of all the broken promises he’s made, and turning for the door. He ought to be running, back to the safe house, back into the circle of protection Regina had set up for all of them for just this possibility. Running away.

He ran away from that alleyway. He can’t run away anymore.

Emma just watches.

“Where are you going?” 

She’s quiet, his ghost. Paler than usual as she worries her lip between her teeth. He tries not to look at her. He knows she’ll haunt him for as long as he has left, regardless, and gives her an answer that, really, isn’t an answer at all.

“Where do you go? When you’re not here?”

Quieter still. “I don’t know.”

“No,” he says, “No. I don’t suppose anybody does.”

The draft as the door closes behind him is far colder than her touch.

\---

It might just be the night for it. Fog might be swirling around his ankles, tendrils reaching out of the darkness like ethereal hands plucking at his clothes and plotting to drag him away. He wouldn’t know. The only ghostly hands he imagines are hers, small and warm and solid in his own. The only darkness he’s aware of is the thick, cloying blackness of the guilt that rises up his throat and threatens to choke him on every laboured breath.

The alleyway is just as he remembers it. In so much as he doesn’t.

The worst of all the terrible acts he’s committed, and he can’t even recall it. Recalls nothing whatsoever beyond the spike of adrenaline behind stale vomit, the crack of a bullet and those terrible, beautiful eyes.

He can’t believe he could ever have forgotten those eyes.

He wonders if his phone is ringing, back in the apartment. Whether that sixth sense that Regina always seems to have for when he’s about to do something she deems idiotic will have her sending the feds to Emma’s door, or whether she’s safe, now. Tucked away in some safe house somewhere with a briefcase containing her new life and only her fury at him to sustain her through it.

He wonders if Emma’s watching the screen, watching for her name, helpless and hopeless and all because of him and shakes off any concern for his erstwhile lawyer. Regina will be alright. She’s enough tentacles in enough pots. She won’t starve for lack of his business, afterward.

Afterward. He knows what’s coming, now.

He runs his thumb over the old burner phone in his pocket and eyes the entrance to the bar that sits just at the edge of the streetlights glow. Christ he could use a drink now. Dutch courage, Liam had called it. Killian isn’t sure he’s ever been courageous in his life, drunk or otherwise. He’s not kidding himself that this is bravery. It's simply a necessity. Too many people have been destroyed by Killian's hideously poor judgement. Too many good people suffering on behalf of such a terrible man.

And he is a terrible man, that's a certainty. The sort of man who could shoot a woman and not even remember the deed. The lowest, cruellest -

He scrubs a fist over his danmably damp cheeks. No, this is not bravery.

This is penance.

( _ This is idiocy, little brother. _ )

This is ending. Now.

He turns his back on the light, pulls the phone from his pocket, and dials.


	7. Chapter 7

For all Killian might be a rat, Smee is a snake.

He’d always been there, hovering in the shadows cast by whatever dark deed Killian had been sent to commit. Not part of anyone’s inner circle, but a constant presence nonetheless. Killian doesn’t know what hold Gold has over Smee, he’d never cared to ask, but there must be something. Some debt unpaid, or promise unkept.

Because Smee had played at being Killian’s man, for a while. Done his bidding, passed on his regards, bought and sold and bribed at Kilian’s behest, but it had all been just that - a game. Because when it came down to it, when Killian had chosen Milah’s memory over Gold’s control, Smee had turned his coat and fled.

He slithers back, red cap pulled down low, new scars on his hands and face. Perhaps no-one is safe from an association with Killian, even those who choose to betray him. It’s not quite a comforting thought, but it helps to set his jaw, helps to keep his voice steady when he speaks.

“Long time no see, Mr Smee. I see life has been no better to you than you deserve.”

Smee sniffs, eyes darting from Killian to the bar and back again. He’s exposed, here. Killian has chosen the corner table, his back to the wall, both doors in his line of sight. He’d called Smee because he knew that Smee would come. He doesn’t believe for a moment that he’s come alone.

“Thought you was in hiding,” he says, weight shifting from foot to foot. “Wasn’t expectin’ -”

“Spare me the false surprise,” Killian sneers. It’s strange, how easy it is to fall back into the rhythm of it all. When he stands it’s with a swagger that he hasn’t felt since that first safehouse. When he steps towards Smee, Smee steps back.

There’s a gun in his pocket, and it would be so easy to use it.

It used to be so easy to run.

For perhaps the first time in a long, long time, he doesn't.

\----

Killian’s armed, but he never gets chance to pull his gun.

The moment Smee leads him into the grubby little warehouse his fate is sealed, signed for, and frankly deserved. Gold smiles at him, a crocodile’s smile, and although he should be frightened, should be  _ terrified _ all he can think is well, well. This is it then. This was always going to be it.

Two of Gold’s men have him by the arms as the man himself approaches. He looks Killian up and down, at the sensible sweater and the baggy jeans and tuts sadly.

“Oh dear, Hook. How the mighty have fallen.”

“It’s Killian,” he spits, “It’s Killian now.”

“Oh,” another smile, a nod. “I’m afraid it’s not anything at all now, dearie. Not a thing.”

The gun comes down on his temple with a crack. He feels blood blooming, tastes it in his mouth. Snarls.

“You can kill me, but they’re coming for you Gold. It’s over for you too, mate. It’s all over.”

“Regina?” Gold laughs, impish. “Not terribly likely I’m afraid. She thinks she’s very clever doesn’t she? Well let me tell you a secret, Hook.” He leans in, his breath sour. Killian’s vision blurs at the edges until Gold’s all he can see. The last thing he’ll see. “I’m cleverer.”

“Boss? You sure this is a good idea?” Smee mutters. A last breath of loyalty that he’ll likely pay for later. Through the haze Killian sees him turn his head toward the door. There's a clattering coming from somewhere, the sound of metal on metal. Smee shifts from foot to foot. A nervous twitch. Gold pays none of it any attention. His beady eyes are fixed on a man barely more than a boy. Felix, Killian remembers, Felix who scared even him. He slouches over, tomahawk in hand.

Gold's smile is beyond reptilian now. His teeth are unnaturally sharp, his eyes cold and black as his soul. He nods, and the boys holding Killian down shift their weight until his left arm is bent back and away from his body. He swallows a cry, and Gold tuts.

"She was lovely, your wife. Beautiful. What a burden this must be." A heavy weight smashes into his fingers, grinding his wedding ring against the concrete and making him jerk in pain. Gold leers over him and clicks his fingers. Felix disappears from Killian's line of sight. "Let me relieve you of it."

There’s a flash of steel, an unholy scream, and then -

Nothing.

\----

He doesn't know what to expect. Not angels on clouds bearing golden harps, that's for sure. The Sunday school lessons of his infancy are long past, but he recalls enough of the rules to know he's less than no chance of being welcomed by Saint Peter at some pearly gates. The other place seems much more likely, but the searing agony no longer rises up his arm to lick at his chest, and he's fairly sure that that sort of thing is a given when you're facing damnation. Instead he seems to be swaying, ever so gently, like a child in their mother's arms. He risks a breath and the air is cool, sharp with ozone and not a hint of sulphur.

"Killian?"

An angel afterall. Liam will be gobsmacked to see him on this side of the fence, that's for sure.

"Killian?"

She sounds afraid, his angel. Maybe she knows there's been a mix up. Red tape. Terrible stuff. All red red red red...

"Oof!"

The slap is rather less angelic. 

He blinks blearily up at her where she hovers over him, her brows drawn tight in consternation.

"What the hell are you doing here?"

"Pertinent choice of words," he grumbles, sitting up slowly. His eyes flicker in disbelief to where his left hand rests, whole and properly attached to the rest of him. "Where is here, exactly?"

Emma sits back on her heels and shrugs. "I don't know. I never remember, after, where I've been. I don't even know if I've been here before."

He looks around. Lets both hands curl against the polished floor. Wooden walls rise around them on three sides, the fourth is made up of a great window that looks out over a greying ocean. A bed is built into one wall, and a table is screwed to the floor behind Emma. He doesn't need to look to know that it's covered in plans, drawings, promises made and never acted upon.

Liam's boat. 

("Ship, little brother.")

The life they should have had, and Emma. Emma kneeling in the centre of it all and making his heart shatter the same way he'd shattered that great window and tossed every promise he'd ever made from it. Thrown them all to the sea that had taken his brother from him.

"You haven't. I have." And Killian Jones doesn't believe in heaven or hell, but then he never believed in ghosts, either. Perhaps he's been returned to the moment he became one. It would make sense, he thinks. In so much as any of this makes sense at all. "This is the ship I was to sail with my brother, before he died." He takes another breath. Funny, he doesn't usually have to think about it. "I scuttled her, in a fit of fury."

Emma shakes her head. "I don't know -"

Killian smiles. It feels a little wrong. A little off kilter, just like the breathing. "She's dead, Emma. And so am I."

She stares at him.

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Far too late for that, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t -” she pauses, scoffs. “How can you be dead? I just - I just  _ saw  _ -” Another pause, and her eyes grow wider. Greener. He stops trying to breathe, it hurts too much. “What the fuck did you do?”

“I ended it.” He lets the words fall out of him like relief, but he doesn’t feel it. Not now. Not with Emma still sat, staring, horrified. Horrified, and she doesn’t even know the  _ half  _ of it. 

“You did  _ what _ ? You - you - ” She stands and in a single movement launches herself across the room to smack him violently across the shoulders. “What the  _ hell _ , Killian! What do you think this is, huh? Romeo and goddamn Juliet?”

Ah. Perhaps not the best choice of phrase, under the circumstances. 

“No! No - I - please, Emma, if you’d just release - Thank you. I didn’t mean that I’d finished  _ myself. _ ” Intent be damned, honesty is the last and only policy available to him now. “Gold. I intended to finish him, and he, well, he finished me, I suppose.” He smiles wanly. “ Left to rot in a grubby old dockside warehouse. Not much more than what I deserved I suppose , in the end.”

Emma stares, aghast.

" _ Why? _ "

"We weren't exactly friends, Swan. I gave the details of his entire organisation to the authorities. Under the circumstances he could hardly send me to pistol whip myself, could he?"

Emma grows paler still, her hands curling into his shirt.

"How did -" She takes a deep, shuddering breath. "Was it my fault he found you?"

It's not really a question with an answer, that. He tries anyway.

"No. None of this is your fault, Emma." He takes a breath. "Every last part of it is mine."

“I don’t -” she takes another great, gasping breath that ends as a sob, “Killian, I don’t understand.”

The dead ship creaks and sways beneath him, another world’s sun catching in Emma’s hair, and he doesn’t, either. He doesn’t understand any of it. Not how he got here, or why he’s reaching out for her. Not why she’d bury her face in the crook of his neck, nor why her tears should feel so much more real than his own. He doesn’t understand why he’s been given only this one chance to hold her, or why he’d be given any chance at all.

He doesn’t understand how he knows what comes next, only that he does. A gift, perhaps, from a God he’s never believed in and certainly doesn’t deserve.

“Emma, you have to wake up.”

She pulls back to look at him through bloodshot eyes.  _ Living _ eyes. His own body feels heavy now. Brittle. “Because it’s that easy.”

“It is,” he tells her, wrapping his hands around both of hers with what little strength he has. “I think - I think it really is.”

She shakes her head, her hair flying. “No, because if it was - if it was -”

“Do you trust me?”

“Of course I -” She stops. Pulls her hands free and grabs at his lapels. “Wait. Wait, what about you? Are  _ you _ gonna wake up? Killian?”

He smiles, because she’s beautiful. Not a ghost but an angel sent to save him from himself. An angry angel, right enough, with her fists around his jacket and his name on her lips, but perhaps that’s just right. An avenging angel, for the man who died for his vengeance.

“What are you  _ smiling  _ for!”

“I’m with you, aren’t I?”

Emma practically growls, and he thinks for one moment that she might just launch him across the cabin, but then she stops. Releases his jacket only to lay her palms against his chest. He can feel the slow thrum of a heartbeat between them, but he doesn’t know if it’s hers or the echo of his own. Her eyelashes flutter closed, her hands coming up to rest on his cheeks. They’re warm, so warm. He leans into the heat, into her.

“I’m going to find you,” she promises, “I swear. I’ll find you. I’ll save you.”

“You already saved me,” he tells her, pressing his forehead against her own. “No matter what happens, Emma, you must know you saved me in all the ways that matter.”

And when he kisses her, finally,  _ finally _ -

he saves her right back. 

\---

Waking feels a lot like drowning. She claws her way to consciousness without any real sense of what that might be, only that she's following some instinct that keeps her struggling towards some memory of light.

She breaks out with a gasp that burns her lungs.

There's a drip in her hand and wires on her chest and - yeah, something unpleasant in a bag at the side of her bed - but she can't bring herself to care about any of it. There's a figure curled up in the too-small chair in the corner of the room tucked beneath a blanket stamped with the hospital's name, but none of that matters. Nothing matters, except for Killian. Someone has to get to Killian.

She tears the tape from her hand holding her IV in place, swings her wobbly legs over the bedrails, and sets off an alarm loud enough to wake the dead.

She ought to know.

The figure leaps from the chair as though they've been electrocuted. Pale, drawn cheeks and wild blond hair, and for one terrible moment Emma is worried she may have found herself in some bizarre rewrite of While You Were Sleeping, but then he speaks, and she remembers.

She remembers.

"Emma! Emma, oh my God, Emma! You're alive, you're -"

David dashes to her bedside, his eyes wide, and she can see that they're rimmed red. The bags beneath them. The bags that she put there.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm -" Her voice is raw and unsteady, her throat like sandpaper. "- hurts."

"You've been intubated, Ems. Hell." David rubs his hand over his face. He hasn't shaved. Mary Margaret hates it when he hasn't shaved. "Do you - do you remember what happened?"

She nods and tries for words, but only a funny little croak escapes. David hands her a paper cup of water, then holds it for her as her strength fails her and her hands shake.

"- was shot?"

"Yeah, yeah. But we got him, sweetheart. We got him."

"- got. Killian?"

"Who's Killian?"

Emma rolls her eyes. "-shot. Me. Accident."

"That's his defence, sure. But Emma, I don't know who you're talking about. It was Jefferson. Jefferson shot you.”

The world’s too bright, the walls closing in, and none of his words seem to make any sense. Jefferson shot her. 

And now, now, she remembers. She remembers the chill of the alley and the way her nose had run from the cold. She remembers the hunched shoulders of the man retching into the dumpster and the _pity_ , god, she remembers the pity she'd felt as he turned those bright blue eyes on her. She remembers the bang, the burn, the shock and the agony and that oh so familiar face at the entrance of the alleyway. Jefferson's sneer twisting into horror as she'd fallen, and the running, oh she remembers -- they all ran, except her.

Jefferson shot her, but Killian died for it.

The room seems to sway just like Liam’s boat - and had that all been real? Could it have been? And if it was - even if it  _ wasn’t - _

Jefferson had shot her, but she hadn’t died. She hadn’t been dead on that boat, and maybe, just maybe - 

David’s looking at her as though she’s gone mad, and oh, she has, she absolutely has, but goddamit, he’s just going to have to  _ listen _ .

“Call Regina - she’ll - call her.”

David narrows his eyes, but his hand strays towards his pocket and that’s a start at least.

“Regina who?”

“The -” Emma throws her arms out in despair and half a dozen machines begin to bleep in warning. “She’s a  _ lawyer _ . You’re a  _ cop _ .”

She stops to cough, a nasty, hacking thing, and David’s hand shifts from his pocket to reach for her shoulder. She struggles to bat it away.

“Please, David. The man I - a man is dying. Killian. You have to find him. Please.”

And David might think she’s mad, but he’s a good man. An angel. He nods.

“I’ll look into it,” he says. “I promise.”

The door to her room swings open and suddenly it seems like half the hospital are gathered around her bed, poking and prodding and asking questions she barely hears. They tut at her alarms and tuck her back beneath the itchy sheets as David sidles from the room, his phone in hand.

Only when she sees him lift it to his ear does she allow herself to sink into the pillows, exhaustion crashing over her harder than any wave.

There’s no Killian waiting for her now. She fades into the darkness alone.

\----

Generally speaking David’s a pretty straightforward guy who lives a pretty straightforward life. He goes to work, keeps the streets clean, goes home to his beautiful wife. The American Dream. Except recently his life has become a surrealist nightmare of epic proportions, and now he finds himself trying to explain to his boss that he needs to pull one of the most powerful lawyers in the State out of whatever safe house they’ve got her in on the basis of a coma victim’s ramblings.

The Chief doesn’t sound wildly convinced.

“You’re going to have to run that by me again, Nolan.”

“With all due respect Chief, I don’t think I have the time.”

“Because the girl told you there has been a kidnapping.”

“Yes.”

“While she was in a coma.”

“Yes, sir.”

A long, pregnant pause. “Go home, Nolan. You’ve had a rough month.”

"But Chief -"

"But nothing, Nolan. I am not risking Regina Mills' life on the basis of your friend's coma dream. She's at the centre of the Gold case, do you know what that means?"

Of course David knows what that means. No one in the entire department could fail to be intensely,  _ intimately _ aware of all the work that's gone in to building a case against Robert Gold. The man's slippery as an eel, his fingers in more pies than the Chief could hope to eat in a year, and it's not exactly a  _ surprise _ to David that Regina Mills is involved but it is going to make meeting her for a chat a lot more difficult. 

The Chief doesn't wait for his reply though, he's already speaking. "And besides which we've already gone and lost one witness, any more go walkabout the DA will have my badge and my head to go with it!"

David stops his pacing, sneaking a sideways glance through the window to where the nurses are fiddling with Emma's monitors.

"You've lost a witness, sir?"

" _ Strictly _ confidential information, Nolan."

"What if." David takes a deep breath. "What if I told you I might have a lead?"

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

Death stinks of antiseptic and bile and what little he can see is blurry, cold and grey. This neverland world populated by shadowy figures without faces who stutter into existence before fading away into the fog beyond.

He isn’t frightened though.

There’s a warm hand on his cheek and a soft breeze against his forehead, and it’s all right. It’s all right.

There’s a bright light above him, blotting out the faceless men and the darkness prickling at the corners of his vision. That’s all right, too. He’s ready, now.

He lets the light guide him home.

\---

When she first comes home, everything is different. Henry tiptoes around her, picking up after himself and watching with large dark eyes as she wraps herself in unwashed bedsheets and hoards dirty coffee mugs by the dozen. Mary Margaret stays at first, and her presence is a motherly comfort to both of them, but even she whispers to David behind closed doors about  _ trauma _ and  _ counselling _ and  _ near death experiences  _ like it’s something Emma needs to just get over. To deal with. Forget, like the way she’s forgotten how to sleep in the middle of her bed; always leaving room for a body that’s not there. Like the way her heart had forgotten how to beat when they’d wheeled him into the hospital, David at his head and half the Police Department scurrying along behind. A miracle, they’d called it. Incredible.  _ Wonderful _ . But Emma had seen the crimson stains on the sheets, the horrible, ashen, shade of his skin, and her poor heart had stuttered and ached with something that wasn’t so much relief as horror. It hasn’t worked quite right ever since.

Days pass. Nothing else does.

Zelena has her reward money posted, tucked into a little green envelope beside her notice of termination. It’s more than Emma expected from her, but still the cheque sits, uncashed, beside the ever growing pile of mugs and the unopened post that doesn’t bear her name.

Henry goes back to school, Mary Margaret goes back too. David returns to the precinct. Emma washes one mug with trembling hands and it smashes into a thousand ceramic shards at her feet.

"For god's sake get a  _ grip _ !" She kicks out at the pieces, frustration prickling at the backs of her eyelids. "Enough already! Enough!"

The broken pieces don't stare back up at her as she glares, her chest heaving. They don't have eyes. They judge nonetheless.

Even the crockery thinks she's pathetic.

"What am I supposed to  _ do,"  _ she growls. "Pretend like none of it ever happened? Pretend he - they all think I'm crazy. Everyone." She laughs. "I'm talking to fucking  _ dinnerware. _ "

And dinnerware doesn't talk. It doesn't have a mouth.

But it does give her an idea.  There’s someone else out there who’s just as crazy as she is to the outside world. Someone Emma has a whole  _ skeleton _ worth of bones to pick with.

She leaves the pieces where they lie, and heads for the door.

Her legs are almost as unsteady as her hands. Six weeks in a coma will do that to you.

She skitters her unsteady way down the stairs and out onto the street, phone grasped tightly in her hand and chin held high. The odd passerby spares her a sideways glance, but she doesn't bother to acknowledge any of them. She probably looks a mess. She absolutely is one. She really couldn't care less.

The ten blocks to Belle's store feel like one hundred, but it's worth it to see the sliver of light peaking from behind the hastily erected boards that cover the windows.

"Gotcha."

She’s prepared to smash her way in, law and muscle degeneration be damned, but there’s no need. The door is only resting on the latch and swings open at the first hammer of her fist. 

“Ding dong, anyone home?”

The shop is thick with dust and incense, but the shelves are bare. Dozens of cardboard boxes litter the place, each stuffed with mountains of books and unrecognisable oddments. Beyond them, behind the counter and half hidden in a blue cloak, is Belle.

“Can I help you?” her voice is quiet, a little shaky. So it should be, because if Emma’s got her facts straight, then this woman is the reason that Killian’s - that Killian’s - “Oh.” Belle blinks owlishly at her. “Oh, it’s you.”

All right. It’s not quite the reaction Emma was expecting, but she can work with it.

“Surprise!” Emma throws her arms out, indulges in a little jazz hands. “You going somewhere?”

“Lease is up.”

“I’ll bet.” Emma takes a step forward. Two. Belle surprises her again by standing her ground, lifting her chin to look Emma in the eye. “Thing is, I’ve been doing some research. Turns out your landlord’s going to be doing quite a bit of time.”

“If you’ve come to accuse me of something -”

“Can’t," Emma spits it out, “you know I can’t. What’s my evidence? They’d throw it right out. But I know and you know that only one person knew where Killian was. And that person just so  _ happens _ to be getting rock bottom rates from a mafia landlord?” She scoffs. “Just because I can’t prove it -”

Belle looks down and bites her lip. Emma allows herself a little shiver of victory.  "Is he..?"

“You’re the psychic,” Emma sneers.  "Shouldn't you know?"

Belle doesn’t say anything to that, only sweeps another armful of books into a box before gathering it up and moving to step around Emma toward the door. Emma steps in her way, her fists tight, blood boiling.

“Is that it? You’re not even denying it? You sold Killian out to Gold.”

Belle tilts her head. Looks at her. Emma suddenly feels uncomfortably like she’s the one being judged and found wanting. “Is there any point?”

“Are you  _ stupid _ ?” It’s a genuine question, albeit spat out in a tone of utter disbelief. “He’s a murderer! You knew what he’d do to him!”

“I was trying to save the man I love from a life behind bars!” And now it’s Belle who’s glaring, “I can’t help who he is!  Haven't you ever done anything stupid for love? Have you ever even been in love?”

Emma blinks at her.  "No," she lies. “No, I haven’t.” 

"Then I'm sorry for you, Emma Swan. Truly. I'm so sorry. But you have your life now. What you do with it is up to you."  Belle moves to the door, holds it open, and inclines her head toward the street. “Even if it’s something stupid. Even if it breaks your heart.”

\---

Emma intends to go home, she really does, but if the road to hell is paved with good intentions then at least it passes a seven eleven on the way. She buys the least unhappy looking bunch of flowers she can find and a punnet of grapes, and heads back to the place that stars in all her nightmares.

She doesn't often take advice from a gangster's psychic moll, but when she does, she goes all out. Something stupid? Something ridiculous more like. She dithers outside the hospital shop weighing which soft toy really says ' _ sorry you nearly died on my account but do you think you could see your way to loving me anyway _ ' before giving up and heading up to the floor she's memorised.

She hates this place. It stinks of death and despair and Lysol. Her breath comes too quickly for her pace and sweat prickles beneath her collar. She hates this place, but that isn't why she hasn't been back. 

She hasn't been back because she's  _ terrified _ .

David had warned her that there’d be guards on the doors, CCTV trained over every bloodied inch of him, Gold still far too dangerous even locked up behind every literal and figurative set of bars the Portland PD could conceive of, and she’d thanked him for the thought but --

But that’s not what she’s scared of. Not really.

The desk nurse eyes her sad armful of gifts and smiles, perhaps knowingly, perhaps pityingly, Emma's kind of too freaked out to interpret it. Instead she just mumbles his name, the plastic punnet cracking beneath the pressure of her fingertips.

"He hasn't had many visitors. I'm sure he'll be pleased to see you." She says it like a fact, like a certainty.

Emma, cellophane wrapping sticking to her sweaty palm, isn't quite as sure.

Her time with Killian feels more distant by the hour and the harder she tries to cling onto the memories the more they seem to take on the colour and clarity of a fever dream. It's hard to believe, now, that his eyes are quite as blue as she remembers, or his laugh as beautiful and as bitter. That a man named Killian Jones lies just beyond the next door is undeniable. That he's  _ hers _ -

(And Emma had promised Henry no more risk, no more danger. She'd promised. But this, this is a risk she's going to have to justify.)

She opens the door, her breath catching, and suddenly, so suddenly, it isn't a risk at all.

"Killian?" He's sleeping, machinery keeping a steady beat as a myriad of wires and tubes wind over and into him. His skin is pale, his beard rough, and his stunted left arm is swathed in bandages but he's here. He's here and so is she and she can't remember why she ever left.

She should never have left.

"Killian? Can you hear me?"

She drops the fruit and flowers on the only chair and settles her weight carefully at the foot of the bed. He shows no outward sign of waking but the bleeps of the machinery kick up a notch.

"You know I really hate this place," she tells him, half in lieu of an apology half because she just needs to get the words out. "It smells weird. Everything smells weird now, did you know that? Henry says it's my superpower. It's a shitty superpower."

The machines beep. Emma twists the hospital issue sheets around her fingers.

"David said… he said you were in a bad way. I saw -- I couldn't stay, Killian." A sob rises up her throat and she gulps it back, suddenly furious with herself because she's here  _ now _ and now -- 

"Emma?" His voice is cracked and dry but achingly, painfully familiar. The eyes that blink up at her are bleary but ocean blue. The sob escapes, trickles down her cheek and drips onto the sheets. "Emma? You're -- you're alive?"

"Good as, last time I checked," she manages, smiling through the tears and squeezing his uninjured arm as hard as she dares. "What about you?"

He stiffens, attempts to wrench his arm from under her hand, and for a moment her heart sinks right through her feet and down through the floor.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Killian --”

“You shouldn’t  _ be _ here!” She realises with a sudden dawning horror that he’s pulling at his monitors, frantic in his efforts to dislodge her. Alarms ring out and through the frosted glass of the door she sees the nurse look up, concerned.

“I’ll leave! I’ll leave! Just -- Killian stop you’ll hurt yourself!”

“No better than I deserve,” he says, misery in every word. He looks past her to the doorway where the nurse now stands, hovering. 

“Is everything okay here?”

“Fine,” Emma lies, standing, “it’s fine, I’m just going. I’m -- I’m going.”

The nurse goes back to her desk, looking back over her shoulder as she does so. Killian slumps back onto his pillows.

“Emma,” he says, and she stops. She suspects she’ll always stop for him. “Emma I’m so sorry.”

And then she remembers.

Fucking  _ hell _ , David. Talk about things that ought to be  _ mentioned _ .

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she says. “I mean that.”

“But you --”

“It wasn’t you,” she says, sitting back down. Taking his hand in both of hers. “I know you think that. But it wasn’t you. It was -- a long story. I got caught in the crossfire, I guess. It wasn’t you.”

“It was meant for me, then,” he says, ever observant of the things she doesn’t say. It was the same when she didn’t know what those things were. “You took a bullet meant for me.”

He looks, if anything, even more miserable.

“And yet I’m here. That’s thanks to you too, you know.”

“Nevertheless --”

“Neverthe _ less _ .” She reaches down to push a lock of hair from his eyes. “It makes a hell of a dinner party story, wouldn’t you say.”

He scoffs at that until he coughs, rough and painful. “I’d have preferred a less horrific form of meet cute, Swan.”

“Yeah well, me too. Want to try again?”  He raises his brows at her and she smiles, pleased.  “How about this? I’m just here visiting this poor coma patient and --”

“That’s the plot to  _ While You Were Sleeping _ , Swan.”

“You’re no fun.”

He manages a weak laugh. “That, I will accept.”

“Alright,” she says, making a decision. The decision. “How about this?” She leans down and presses her lips against his cool forehead. She feels him relax beneath her, lets the moment linger. "Better?"

He sighs, his eyes fluttering closed, and smiles.

"Just like heaven."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's that! Thank you to everyone who's been following along with this fic since the long, long ago beginning. You're the real MPVs and I'm just glad that I managed to complete it for you in the end!


End file.
